The Guadalajara Reporter

Tarantulas: one man’s fight to save a species – and it’s working

I was about to start a game of racquetball with my friend Rodrigo Orozco when his cell phone beeped. The text message was from an unknown caller. “I’ve been bitten by a tarantula. What do I do?” were the words on the small screen.

“Do nothing,” Orozco texted back, “Mexican tarantulas are harmless.”

After our game, I asked my friend, also known as Tarantula Man, how his private war on tarantula poaching was going. Years ago, Orozco had noted how Mexico’s endangered tarantula population was being decimated by poachers hunting down the creatures in the wild in order to sell them abroad – illegally, of course. After examining a wide range of options he decided the best response would be to flood the market with tarantulas raised in captivity.

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